Barnes picks ONE Jamaican for training

[Muadib]

Has this been demonstrated in the sport of Football ?

[Jangle]

T&F is the sport that best represents our ability to develop talent. It is really simple. It was the first of the sports that had teachers and lecturers devoting 'serious time' to learning how to teach the various disciplines to student teachers and to the coaching of pupils and students - elementary through to college. In our teachers colleges T&F is the sport that is most emphasized. In colleges the Phy Education departments always have had lecturers well trained to teach the track part of T&F.

The student teachers out of those colleges were then sent out into the highways and byways of the island - Some followed the lecturers and went outside of the island to do University graduate courses and other specialist courses.

It was the sport where there was usually little investment in 'gear'. In primary school and the earlier elementary schools it was 'bare foot races'...with the kids dressed in their school uniforms. We have been at learning the ropes on developing the track athlete from 'cradle' to adulthood for eons. We have become experts at that development process. There is a reason why we are considered by some as the "Sprint captial of the World".

Our teachers of the sport can and do step out of their high school and primary school coaching jobs and into coaching jobs in High Schools, Junior Colleges and Universities in the US. Our athletes and our coaches are in demand in the US.

Football, for example, has still not penetrated our primary schools. Most primary schools do not enter competitive organised football tournaments...and as a consequence there is no formal coaching.

On the other hand track meets are serious business and just about all our primary schools have formal preparation of the young athletes and do have intra-school (house & class competitions) and inter-school meets.

It is not that there is not an abundance of talent that could be channelled to and in football. There is lack of a formal process through which the talent is channeled. For football there is a lack of good football teachers. That is slowly changing..but unfortunately most of the competent coaches of football are not teachers. It is coaching talent brought in to interact with the high schools and prep schools school teams. It means the vast majority of pupils at the age when the 'kids are sponges'...where absorption of learning skills is at its highest...are just not being introduced to any teaching/coaching of football...or any good teaching/coaching of football.

Karl yuh see how coherant yuh can sound when yuh tek yuh medicine? Not very often I spend the time to read entirely one of your posts. Well said sir.

[Muadib]

Pity he failed to address the question.